The Waste Lands (Page 32)

“It’s really nothing.” Eddie felt warm blood mount into his face. He tried to look away from the ash tree which had caught his eye. “But it is. It’s something you need, and that’s a long way from nothing. If you need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don’t need is a man who can’t let go of the useless baggage of his memories.”

The warm blood turned hot. Eddie stood with his flaming face pointed at his moccasins for a moment longer, feeling as if Roland had looked directly into his confused heart with his faded blue bombardier’s eyes. “Eddie?” Susannah asked curiously. “What is it, dear?” Her voice gave him the courage he needed. He walked to the slim, straight ash, pulling Roland’s knife from his belt.

“Maybe nothing,” he muttered, and then forced himself to add: “Maybe a lot. If I don’t f**k it up, maybe quite a lot.”

“The ash is a noble tree, and full of power,” Roland remarked from behind him, but Eddie barely heard. Henry’s sneering, hectoring voice was gone; his shame was gone with it. He thought only of the one branch that had caught his eye. It thickened and bulged slightly as it ran into the trunk. It was this oddly shaped thickness that Eddie wanted.

He thought the shape of the key was buried within it—the key he had seen briefly in the fire before the burning remains of the jawbone had changed again and the rose had appeared. Three inverted V’s, the center V both deeper and wider than the other two. And the little s-shape at the end. That was the secret. A breath of his dream recurred: Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

Maybe, he thought. But this time I’ll have to get all of it. I think that this time ninety per cent just won’t do.

Working with great care, he cut the branch from the tree and then trimmed the narrow end. He was left with a fat chunk of ash about nine inches long. It felt heavy and vital in his hand, very much alive and willing enough to give up its secret shape … to a man skillful enough to tease it out, that was. Was he that man? And did it matter?

Eddie Dean thought the answer to both questions was yes. The gunslinger’s good left hand closed over Eddie’s right hand. “I think you know a secret.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Can you tell?”

He shook his head. “Better not to, I think. Not yet.”

Roland thought this over, then nodded. “All right. I want to ask you one question, and then we’ll drop the subject. Have you perhaps seen some way into the heart of my . . . my problem?”

Eddie thought: And that’s as dose as he’ll ever come to showing the desperation that’s eating him alive.

“I don’t know. Right now I can’t tell for sure. But I hope so, man. I really, really do.”

Roland nodded again and released Eddie’s hand. “I thank you. We still have two hours of good daylight—why don’t we make use of them?” “Fine by me.”

They moved on. Roland pushed Susannah and Eddie walked ahead of them, holding the chunk of wood with the key buried in it. It seemed to throb with its own warmth, secret and powerful.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER SUPPER was eaten, Eddie took the gunslinger’s knife from his belt and began to carve. The knife was amazingly sharp, and seemed never to lose its edge. Eddie worked slowly and carefully in the firelight, turning the chunk of ash this way and that in his hands, watching the curls of fine-grained wood rise ahead of his long, sure strokes.

Susannah lay down, laced her hands behind her head, and looked Up at the stars wheeling slowly across the black sky.

At the edge of the campsite, Roland stood beyond the glow of the fire and listened as the voices of madness rose once more in his aching, confused mind. There was a boy.

There was no boy.

Was.

Wasn’t.

Was—

He closed his eyes, cupped his aching forehead in one cold hand, and wondered how long it would be until he simply snapped like an overwound bowstring. Oh Jake, he thought. Where are you? Where are you? And above the three of them, Old Star and Old Mother rose into their appointed places and stared at each other across the starry ruins of their ancient broken marriage.

II • KEY AND ROSE

II

KEY AND ROSE

FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN “Jake” Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising inside him. During that time he felt like the last man aboard a foundering ocean liner, working the bilge-pumps for dear life, trying to keep the ship afloat until the storm ended, the skies cleared, and help could arrive . . . help from somewhere. Help from anywhere. On May 31st, 1977, four days before school ended for the summer, he finally faced up to the fact that no help was going to come. It was time to give up; time to let the storm carry him away. The straw that broke the camel’s back was his Final Essay in English Comp. John Chambers, who was Jake to the three or four boys who were almost his friends (if his father had known this little factoid, he undoubt-edly would have hit the roof), was finishing his first year at The Piper School. Although he was eleven and in the sixth grade, he was small for his age, and people meeting him for the first time often thought he was much younger. In fact, he had sometimes been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ago, when he had made such a fuss about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented and allowed it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants to look like a Marine, Laurie. Good for him. To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually just “the kid.”